Month: December 2019

Reflecting On New Years Eve

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The end of the year/decade always gets you thinking back. I know everyone is doing it. It’s hard not to. So much has changed in my life from 10 years ago. I met M. We got married. Had kids. Moved to another country. I don’t think in my wildest dreams I would have been able to predict correctly I would be where I am right now 10 years ago.

For new years eve we were having another family over our house for a mini party. It was just the four adults and four children total. I had to run over to Sainsbury’s for some last-minute things I forgot to order when we put in our Waitrose order earlier in the week. As I was walking around Sainsbury’s I was thinking how I have never seen it so busy. That confuse me since I remembered when we just moved in I had to run to Sainsbury’s on New Year’s Day and it wasn’t that busy. Then I realised I was comparing New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Eve two years ago we barely got the heat fixed in our house. Some of the furniture we ordered from Ikea had arrived and M was putting it together. We slept air mattresses. M worked till 2 or 3 AM in the morning New Year’s Day trying to get the girls bunkbed built.

Reflecting on how different life is now than it was when we first arrived confirms previous thoughts I’ve had about how adjusted we have become to living here.

The most profound takeaway I have from this experience for future Scott is don’t go to Sainsbury’s on New Year’s Eve. Going on year’s day is probably okay.

Two Years and Counting

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It took me until around 7:30 PM to realise that today was our two year anniversary of being in England. We were out one of our neighbours for drinks and appetisers for the holiday. Somehow in the conversation the topic came up on how long we have been living here. I had to think about it for a few seconds before I realised it was almost down to the hour two years.

I thought about the anniversary coming up quickly earlier in the week however today it slipped my mind with all the people doing on our holiday.

In some ways it feels like no time is pastorale. In other ways our world is entirely different than it was two years ago. What hope we love the next two years here as much as we did the last two…

NOTE: I forgot to post this on the 29th so I am posting it in early Jan with a retroactive date stamp.)

The Last remnant of My Google Presence is Finally Swept Away

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As of 9-September 2019 I have deleted my last Google account. I have not actively used Google services other than ocasuonally an android phone here or there in years. Up until now I kept my original Gmail account in case I need it. That was mainly for nostalgia reasons. I barely ever log into it. I haven’t used it actively in over a decade. After my abrupt stopping use of my Motorola G7 (see my post on that) I finally decided to take the final step in purge my entire Google presence.

Since I have deleted other accounts before the entire process was pretty easy to back up and delete everything. I have absolutely no regrets. More importantly its not even a nuisance (so far) that i don’t have an account. Every so often i want to save a YouTube video for referencing later. Pocket or Trello is great for capturing that stuff so my designer to have functionality google offers is fleeting.

Now all I need to do is nudge M a little bit to finish moving off of her Gmail account. I’m proud that on her own she asked me to set up a new domain name and email address for her somewhere else. We’ve been down this road before so we’ll see if she finishes migrating.

Jacket Firmware Upgrade

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I never thought I would talk about the fact that today I updated the firmware on my jacket. Yes you read that correctly I said my jacket had a firmware upgrade. That statement and the specific jacket in particular provides my wife endless amusement in making fun of me for having it.

Years ago I found Ministry of Supply as a kickstarter for some socks. After supporting them I started looking into the company. I noticed they had dress shirts and trowsers as well as socks. The history behind the company sounded interesting and what they offered seemed perfect for me. I bought a shirt and have been buying their stuff ever since.

In 2018 when they announced a kickstarter for a smart jacket I was intrigued. The discount on backing the project was pretty good as well. I ended up supporting the project. I got the jacket last winter. I really like it. I haven’t needed it this season yet until today. Since the girls were at a birthday party I had some time so I finally followed their instructions to update the firmware on the jacket.

What makes this jacket “smart” is it has a heating element throughout the jacket. It pairs with your phone and adjusts the temperature of the jacket depending on your temperature and activity. Initially the smart part of the jacket did not really work. It would simply heat you based on manual adjusting the app. That in and of itself is pretty cool and worked on cold commute days. This firmware upgrade should fix some connectivity problems and allow for true automatic “smart” heating.

An auto adjusting heated jacket is not really a necessity. It is pretty cool. The jacket itself is actually pretty nice. I would like to even get one without the heating stuff in it so I can travel with it. Overall a great buy for me. The firmware upgrade even went off without a hitch. Even if it was probably more complex than most people would have wanted to deal with.